Evans pessimistic about teams joing force

Cadel Evans remains pessimistic about the chances of joining forces with other teams in a bid to break the Astana juggernaut in the Tour de France.

After 12 stages, he is still more than three minutes off the overall lead and his chances of winning the Tour are slim.

He suffered the ignominy of a crash - luckily within 3km of the finish, which meant he didn't lose time - during the 12th stage yesterday, but he was up quickly and got to the finish line of the 210km stage from Tonnerre to Vittel accompanied by teammates.

Six minutes earlier, Denmark's Nicki Sorensen, of the Saxo Bank team, crossed the line after a breakaway in the last 5km to win the stage in 4hr 52min 24sec.

There has been speculation Evans might join with hopefuls such as last year's winner Carlos Sastre to launch an attack on the super-strong Astana.

The theory is that if Evans, Sastre and Andy and Frank Schleck combine in a break during an alpine stage, they might crack Astana stars Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador.

But Evans thinks there is too much risk in an alliance with other overall contenders. "Certainly, it would be nice to do so but also, OK, we want Astana to lose the Tour," Evans told SBS.

"Even if we combined as one team and attacked and attacked and attacked Armstrong and Contador, if we were strong enough to do so, at one point, if we can crack them, it's only going to benefit one of 10.

"We're not teammates. We want to beat Armstrong, but we want to beat Sastre, for example, from my point of view."

Italian Rinaldo Nocentini, of AG2R, retained the race leader's yellow jersey of the 21-stage Tour with a six-second and eight-second lead respectively on Contador and Armstrong.

The attacks yesterday came thick and fast in the first hour over slightly rolling terrain in which the peloton completed an impressive 48km.

However, none of those attempts was allowed to leave the peloton's clutches until the 64km mark, when a six-man group formed. Sorensen then pulled away from the main bunch to join the breakaway group.

At the finish, the 34-year-old Sorensen was free to bask in a first-ever Tour stage win after 10 years as a professional cyclist and seven previous Tours.